Tom
Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against
terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: “We don’t
do politics at Homeland Security.” Such high-level claims of patriotic
purity have been routine since 9/11. But in this election year, they’re more
ludicrous than ever.

Days earlier, alongside a
photo of Ridge, a headline on USA Today’s front page had declared: “Election
Terror Threat Intensifies.” There was unintended irony in the headline.

While a real threat of
terrorism exists in the United States, we should also acknowledge that an
intensifying “election terror threat” is coming from the Bush
administration. With scarcely 100 days to go until Election Day, the White
House is desperate to wring every ounce of advantage from the American Flag,
patriotism, apple pie -- and the subject of “terrorism.”

Newsweek reported a week
after July Fourth that Ridge’s agency “asked the Justice Department’s Office
of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the
postponement of the election were an attack to take place.” The media
response was mostly negative, and the Bush administration proceeded with its
intended dual message of portraying a postponement as far-fetched -- yet not
quite unthinkable.

Even while the bulk of
commentators panned the postponement scenario, the Bush political team had
succeeded in getting it on the media table without causing a massive
sustained uproar. That’s dangerous.

The leading White House
strategist, Karl Rove, has a record of shoving the envelope in order to win.
Forget ethics or honesty. Some of the documentation about Rove is downright
chilling in the book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush
Presidential,” co-authored by TV news correspondent James Moore and Dallas
Morning News reporter Wayne Slater.

If a terrorist attack
occurs between now and Nov. 2, the administration would be much more likely
to postpone the election if the Republican ticket is behind in the polls.
That kind of unprecedented manipulation of the U.S. presidential election
system should be strictly off-limits.

Several days after Newsweek
broke the story, a Washington Post editorial -- ostensibly shooting at the
trial balloon -- commented that “powerful emotional and even political
arguments exist for holding a presidential election on the day it was meant
to be held, regardless of what happens and who is unable to vote, just as it
was held during the Civil War and just as it would be held in case of a
hurricane, flood, fire or other natural catastrophe.”

Yet the Post editorial’s
conclusion portrayed the postponement scenario in somewhat less than
unequivocal terms: “Congress should think through the consequences of a
disrupted election, but it should remain extremely wary of any scheme to
hold a presidential election at any time other than the first Tuesday of
November.” That kind of language falls short of a clarion call to block
Machiavellian postponement of the national Election Day.

Meanwhile, rhetorical
manipulations about terrorism and the election are already upon us. Pro-Bush
spinners have put out the fatuous idea that a pre-election terrorist attack
on the USA would amount to an effort to oust the incumbent from the White
House. Yet President Bush’s approval ratings skyrocketed across the country
immediately after Sept. 11, 2001.

If anyone stands to gain
politically from a terrorist attack in the United States before Election
Day, in my opinion, it’s George W. Bush. But many journalists have bought
into the opposite line, which sets the stage for Republicans to claim that a
Bush-Cheney victory is necessary to show terrorists that America refuses to
be intimidated.

The GOP’s Sen. Richard
Shelby said as much on MSNBC’s prime-time “Hardball” show July 8: “It won’t
work in America. I’ll tell you, I believe if they try that in America and
think it’s going to influence the election, it will do the opposite. The
American people traditionally have rallied behind the government, the flag,
and we would do it in this case. We’re not going to let outsiders,
terrorists or other foreign powers, influence our elections, tell us what to
do.”

While questioning
Democratic Sen. John Breaux, the “Hardball” host Chris Matthews
energetically blew smoke: “What happens, Sen. Breaux, if it looks like that
al-Qaeda is playing cards here, playing a game of trying to get people to
vote Democrat for president, to basically make their case worldwide? Doesn’t
it put your party in a terrible position of having al-Qaeda rooting for
you?”

The question, based on a
faulty premise, pretended to know something that isn’t known. Given that the
9/11 terrorist attacks became an overnight political boon for President
Bush, it would be more rational to ask how much the Bush-Cheney ticket is
likely to gain from a terrorist attack on U.S. soil before voters pass
judgment on Election Day.